Tambours are sliding flexible lids or covers, which secure the contents inside an enclosure while providing an aesthetically pleasing form. One of the most well-known tambours is the tambour used in a roll-top or tambour desk. The user of the desk can draw the tambour curtain over the working area of the desk to secure the contents on the desk, leaving a visually pleasing piece of furniture. Before the advent of the tambour, roll-top desks included a round cylindrical shell that would retract in tracks carved in the desk until the cylinder was hidden in the back of the desk. The use of tambours works in a very similar way, featuring horizontal slats in place of the solid cylinder. Although there are many varieties of the basic tambour design, the most common method for construction features slats glued to canvas. This type of tambour has the functional benefit of flexibility; however, it is difficult to assemble.
Currently, in addition to the canvas/slat design, it is known that tambours can be formed by using tongue and groove joints in the slats, thereby eliminating the need for canvas to bind the slats together, as described in an article entitled “Building a Roll-Top Desk: Interlocking slats form an all-wood tambour,” by Kenneth Baument, published in the 1989 issue of “Fine Woodworking.” While the Baument article describes a method which achieves a tongue and groove tambour with increased security and an aesthetically pleasing design, forming the joints using the method described in the Baument article is complex, requiring numerous cuts made with various router bits and flutes. It would be beneficial to obtain the attributes of the tongue and groove tambour with a simpler method of formation that would reduce construction time while facilitating the production of a more easily fabricated tongue and groove tambour.